Perhaps Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and the entuire UK Brexit party can be walled up in some forgotten recess in Parliament's walls and forgotten for a century or three.
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Let's all raise a pint to good old Tom Porter.
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Funny, I love "Ould Ale” too!
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Would have been nicer to see more photos of passageway.
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Scanning the headlines of today's NYT, this was the only story I could bring myself to read. There isn't much in America that is half this old, let alone a "secret" passageway in the seat of one of the world's oldest governments. How exciting!
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Hahahaha! The only thing that made me read this article was wanting to know what the Victorian laborers wrote on the wall. Tom Porter's signature and hilarious comment on the passageway meant for the high and mighty gave me such a laugh!
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Could there be a hidden trapdoor in the Oval Office waiting for the overweight occupant to step on just the right spot?
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I wish there had been a picture of the door closed, so we could see how unobtrusive it was to have remained unnoticed so long.
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SO COOL! Congrats to those who discovered this!!!
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“To think that this walkway has been used by so many important people over the centuries is incredible,” said...
That's nothing. I'm breathing their air.
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Wonderful. The world needs more secret passages.
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aA secret passage ending or beginning in the Parliament must go somewhere. Where did the other end of the passage lead?
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So what’s the plan? Are they going to keep it open? Will it be part of a tour? Are they going to reopen the other exits and make it usable again?
Inquiring minds want to know!
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I don't think it is unusual for craftsmen to leave notes and such. I have remodeled a few personal homes and left messages that might be found someday. Removing a wall one time in 87 I found a pair of matching license plates from 34 behind the dry wall. When I was a model maker and made things that would be kept for probably thirty years or more with inevitable reworking in the future (wind tunnel models) I usually hid my initials somewhere. I would have liked to met Tom, or whoever if a punster, myself.
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Tom Porter sounds like my kind of guy, although Ould Ale may be a bit too ould today.
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@Paul Kramer Nearby was another bit of graffiti: "Blimey I could murder for a cup of tea."
;-)
Places like this offer a near electrical connection to the past. What a surprise to see this amazing story amidst all the media chaos of Trump, Coronavirus and market instability.
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I can't help but notice a HVAC register above the woodwork. While not an expert, I wonder how his could have been installed and possibly connected to a heating or cooling source without also noticing the passage way. Interesting!
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@KV
Interesting. The register and duct it covers may be above the ceiling of the passage; or the fresh air duct may have been masonry built into the original construction, not modern; or the register itself may have dated from Victorian times undisturbed since. But the most likely is that the HVAC workers did in fact notice the tunnel, even worked inside it without an an inkling of its significance. That is a fairly commonplace occurrence in modern construction. Just look at the African Burial Ground at Federal Plaza.
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@Patrick
The Guardian’s article on this says the passage was worked in as recently as the 1950’s. When opened it was found to even have an electrical switch with a working lightbulb.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/26/westminster-secret-passageway-discovery-reveals-169-year-old-graffiti.
I bet there is a elderly night janitor in the Parliament who has been catching his wee hours nap in there as recently as last week.
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@KV This article is fiction.
Every modern building has accurate up to date as-built drawings of what is there. The reason is so that fire fighters can find their way through the building if there is a fire.
This was not apparently available at Notre Dame Cathedral delaying French fight fighters for almost an hour as they failed to find the source of the fire that almost destroyed the building which began to be built in the 12th century.
The houses of Parliament date back to the 17th century, the last really big fire in London.
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Great story! Its so exciting to discover these hidden elements of the past.
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I couldn't help but notice that every comment posted seems snarky or aims to make some "point." Not one comment seems to note any of the almost childlike wonder and excitement in finding a secret tunnel connecting history.
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@Tim -- Everyone is so jaded and cynical these days, or pretends to be. We're all too busy with ourselves to care much about history. But, I agree with you. It's exciting to think who the tunnel was used by and imagine the conversations that may have taken place as prime minsters and monarchs walked to parliament. Maybe history was changed during some of those walks. Thanks for the nudge to think about the bigger picture.
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@Tim Sorry, I have 'important people' fatigue.
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My family name is Porter, and my family came to the US from England around 1700. Maybe Tom Porter was my relative. One thing we have in common is that lots of my relatives have also been "very fond of Ould Ale.”
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So the Porter's are found of porter, which may remedy their Ould Ale, Ails? :) Were any of them porters?
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This would be rather more interesting if it had been forgotten since the 1600s and not just since a botched renovation in the 1950s.
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The UK has enormous problems to sort out, so for history fans it's reassuring that funds are still directed to bring to light our shared history.
The core issues which formed the U.S. judicial and legislative structures were formed in the white hot crucible of English government over the past one thousand years.
To learn how we became who we are, one has to learn some English history. And there may be no better or more enjoyable way than to listen to David Crowther's "History of England" podcast. It's brilliant, wry like Python, and may help to keep things in perspective for those who might despair during these ignoble days.
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This is nothing compared to the recent discovery in the US Capitol of a place for reasoned debate, due process, compassion, and Constitutional democracy. That place has been unused since the early years of the Obama administration.
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@Charlie B
Charlie, is it possible to think of anything outside of our colliding US political context? I do not find the segue. Certainly, Parliament has seen about nine centuries of illustrious debate; proof that democracy, as crude as it was originally, will survive.
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@Steve Brocato I understand you don’t appreciate the gallows humor, though 70 other people do. I’m just trying to keep my spirits up.
I’m not so sanguine about the survival of the liberal democracies that have been ascendant in the post-WWII world. We seem to have lost the knack for civility, mutual respect, and eventual consensus. And we’ve discovered, in the US, the UK, and much of Europe a rich hidden vein of fascism and bigotry that needed only a populist demagogue to reveal itself.
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Five billion dollars? Ridiculous. Global warming will probably raise the Thames by 5 to 10 feet by the end of the Century and Parliament will then literally be underwater. Better to spend the money on a renewable energy project.
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@Rex
Not this far upriver. It will affect the Thames Estuary and require upgrades to the existing gates.
I'm all for renewable energy, but this building should be preserved.
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This is the same passageway by which Jeremy Corbyn nearly slipped into leadership. The UK is full of back doors.
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How do you spend 5 billion to refurbish a building? Is it made out of solid gold?
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@Dan - Have you ever seen the Houses of Parliament? The building is huge, over 1 million square feet. The architecture is ornate and historic. The cost seems reasonable, considering that renovating such a historic building requires teams of specialists and crafts people and specialized materials. This is not a renovation that consists of throwing up some drywall and slapping on some paint.
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So is the Graffiti, “This room was enclosed by Tom Porter who was very fond of Ould Ale.” 19th century inside joke? i.e. Porter=Dark Ale=Ould Ale
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"“This room was enclosed by Tom Porter who was very fond of Ould Ale.”
That Ould Ale didn't stop Old Tom Porter from expertly concealing this door. Cheers, Tom.
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We need more of this Victorian-era graffiti in Los Angeles.
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Give some credit to the people responsible. How about actually naming the worker(s) who rediscovered this historical passage and how they did this?
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